I must have been a very ignorant Christian, because I never
knew that “Christmas is not the [real] birthday of Christ (The True Christian,
Unknown).” Of course I could justify that by saying that religion is not my
specialty, but that still doesn’t make it right. For even though I was raised a
Christian, I’m not so sure of anything anymore these days. Wouldn’t you if, to
a concerning degree, you found out about the twisted truths that your
church-leaders have been teaching you through the years?

So now that I started by mentioning that issue, let’s look a little more
closely into the current season, Christmas. Even the name indicates what we’ve
been taught all along: it’s the celebration of the birth of Christ.
Unfortunately, this turns out to be an act of adopting the date of a
celebration that had been in existence for complete different reasons. The True
Christian (Unknown) emphasizes, “The date [of Christ’s birth] was chosen to
counter the pagan festivities (par. 3).” Sounds as a typical thing for the
church to do: overpowering other cultural expressions by simply pilfering the
date from those others and declaring it their own. Rutherford (2001)
underscores that even scholars don’t know the actual date of Christ’s birth and
that “December 25th [was] originally a pagan feast day in honor of
the god, Saturn (par. 2).” Fox (unknown) deepened this information out by
explaining, “Emperor Aurelian established December 25 as the birthday of the
"Invincible Sun" in the third century as part of the Roman Winter
Solstice celebrations. Shortly thereafter, in 273, the Christian church
selected this day to represent the birthday of Jesus, and by 336, this Roman
solar feast day was Christianized (par. 2).”Christ’s birth, according to Rutherford (2001), was previously
celebrated on various dates. This author comes up with a somewhat different
year than Fox for Christianity’s recognition of Christmas on a fixed day by
mentioning 354 as the year that “the bishop of Rome decreed that December 25th
[] should be observed by Christians in honor of Christ's birth (par. 2).”
Interestingly, Rutherford (2001) continues, “in the East, this date was not
accepted; and for centuries, January 6th was celebrated as the birthday of
Jesus, particularly in Egypt. Some branches of the Eastern Orthodox Church,
even today, keep January 6th as Christmas day (par. 2)”. Fox (unknown) explains,
regarding this date, “January 6, celebrated as Epiphany in Christendom and
linked with the visit of the Magi, was originally an Egyptian date for
the Winter Solstice (par. 2)”. So that day, too, was not originally a Christian
holiday. One could wonder then, if the bible doesn’t state anywhere what
Christ’s birthday is, why the church is being so arrogant with its claim of the
day! Don’t we all remember the multiple complaints of “some religious people
[who] protest at [the] "commercializing" of Christmas because they
feel that a sacred, holy day is desecrated by it (Rutherford, 2001, par. 1)”?
Is this arrogance or ignorance…?

However, it’s not only this season that raises question marks. If we
consider the problems around Easter, we see that for centuries there has been
pushing and pulling going on about the remembrance of Christ’s resurrection.
Most of us now know that the date for celebration in some regions falls
together with the Jewish’ celebration of Passover. However, Stone (2001)
explains that even though a consensus was reached at the Council of Nicaea in
325 AD—where, by the way, as some contemplate, much of our current bible as we
know it now, was formulated—there are still differences in opinion about the
actual day of Easter. It turns out that “the consensus over Easter was [once
again] broken when Pope Gregory XIII reformed the calendar in 1582, thus
changing the dates for Easter (Doogue, 2001, par. 8).”Stone (2001) elucidates the issue further by
stating that “today’s division between Christian East and West on this matter
results from the East refusing to accept the West’s unilateral action in
adopting the Gregorian calendar, from the East’s tradition of never celebrating
before the Passover and the differing manner of calculating the epact, which is
the discrepancy between the lunar cycle and the solar cycle (par. 4).” Doogue
(2001) shines some positive light on this typical confusion by first clarifying
that “At present, Easter - the festival marking the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead - is usually celebrated on two different dates (par. 2),”
and then explaining that in 1997 a number of churches, just like the Council of
Nicaea many centuries before, got together in Aleppo, Syria, to re-set a common
date for the Easter-celebration. The newly set unified date would be
effectuated in 2001. Unfortunately, the unification in Easter-celebration has
not yet been reached as of this year. Although 25 churches have already
approved of the amalgamated date, there are still some who “need” more time.
According to the World Council of Churches (WCC), “two leading Orthodox bodies,
the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Moscow, have informed the WCC that they
are [still] studying the proposal (WCC, 2001).”

So now that we are even more confused about the reliability of everything we
learned from our churches, let’s finally briefly look at the first Council of Nicaea, in the third century AD. De
Bary emphasizes the positive purpose of this council by stating that “Never before or since has the Church been so
completely represented at one spot (par. 2).” However, the reasons for the
council to meet were rather disturbing. There had been a widespread confusion
about the trinity that the Christian church nowadays holds on to. The
Arianists, followers of the teachings of Arius, did not accept Jesus Christ as
equal to God, for the simple reason that there had been a time that Jesus did
not exist. So how could he be eternal? Raymond states that Arius, a parish
priest in Alexandria,basically
taught his followers that “before time began the Father had created the Son by
the power of the Word to be His agent in creation. The Son was not therefore to
be identified with the Godhead, He was only God in a derivative sense, and
since there was once when he did not exist He could not be eternal (par. 2).”
The whole issue became so controversial, that the emperor Constantine had to
mediate, which led to the Council. Yet, even though a large number of bishops
signed the agreement on unification of terminology and beliefs used in the
church, there have been ongoing interpretation issues ever since.

It might lead us too far to try and analyze all the issues from our current
church that could raise questions. But it could be wiser for every believer to
consider each lecture thoroughly and, if intriguing enough, read what different
sources say about it. In the meantime, like Rutherford (2001), we should
continue to celebrate the holidays, and definitely enjoy the special atmosphere
that accompanies this time of year. Yet, we should also be more careful with
our strictness on the essence of each holiday from now on because, as
Rutherford states, “to honor December 25th as Christ's birthday, and thus as a
special holy day, is to speak where the Scriptures are silent and to follow the
traditions of men rather than the Word of God (Rutherford, 2001, par. 5)”.

References:

Bary, E. d. (1996, 12 Januari
1998). The Results of the Council, [Internet]. the School of Theology of
the University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee. Available:
http://www.sewanee.edu/Theology/patristicsw/f010/p011.html [2001, December 17].